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RadioShack's parent unveils a $399 computer; skeptics inside the company called it unsellable

Tandy built it for under $150,000 and ordered just 3,500 units.

CB radio sales were fading, and Tandy Corporation, the leather-and-electronics retailer behind RadioShack, needed a new product to fill 3,000 stores. On August 3, 1977, at a press conference in New York City, Tandy announced the TRS-80: a Zilog Z80 machine with 4 KB of RAM, a full keyboard, and a cassette drive, priced at $399, or $599 bundled with a monitor and tape recorder. Company executives had spent months insisting computers wouldn't sell. Tandy planned to build only 3,500 units to start; within the first month and a half, more than 10,000 had sold…

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More from August 3

Owens takes 100-meter gold in Hitler's stadium, 10.3 seconds

The first of four gold medals, run in the stadium Hitler built to prove Aryan supremacy.

A father administers the presidential oath by lamplight in a Vermont farmhouse

Word of Harding's death reaches Plymouth Notch after midnight, and there is no federal judge for miles.

Chambers names Hiss a communist under oath before Congress

A Time magazine editor tells the House Un-American Activities Committee that a former State Department official once ran with a Soviet spy ring.

Ninety-six hours under the ice and 1,590 nautical miles later, the submarine surfaces northeast of Greenland.

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More from Cold War America

Eisenhower orders troops into Little Rock to open Central High's doors

The same Arkansas Guard Governor Faubus used to bar nine Black students is now ordered to protect them.

Warren Commission hands Johnson its verdict: Oswald acted alone

Ten months of testimony from 552 witnesses ends with a single conclusion: no conspiracy, foreign or domestic.

A Soviet screen shows five U.S. missiles inbound; the duty officer calls it a glitch

Stanislav Petrov had no proof the alarm was false, only a hunch that a real attack would look different.

Discovery clears the tower; NASA flies again

Thirty-two months after Challenger, five veteran astronauts ride redesigned boosters off the pad at Kennedy Space Center.

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